Glossary

Question 0

Bilingual Effect

Answer 0

A phenomenon in which bilingual individuals outperform monolingual individuals as a direct result of their language knowledge. Learning another language is a kind of strength training for the brain, which results in increased intelligence and more resilient mental health.

Question 1

Back Chaining

Answer 1

A tongue exercise whereby you take a long word and say the last phoneme alone, then say the last two phonemes, then the last three, gradually building up to to saying the whole word from the beginning to the end. This makes short work of hard-to-pronounce words.

Question 2

Broken Word

Answer 2

A word that you’ve learned through reading but don’t pronounce correctly. When you encounter it in spoken language, you’re going to think it’s a totally new word and get confused. This is one of the reasons why pronunciation training in the beginning can save you time in the long run.

Question 3

Case

Answer 3

Another word for “role.”

What’s the role of the “it” in a sentence?

“Dog eats cat, Cat eats dog, Man gives dog a bone, and Cat eats dog’s food,” the word dog keeps switching cases here.

Question 4

Comprehensible Input

Answer 4

Any foreign language sentences that you can basically understand, either through the help of context clues, body language, translations, or some combination of the above.

“Voulez-vous un cookie?” and offers a cookie.

You don’t speak the language but you take in the comprehensible input. The brain uses this input to piece together the grammatical system of a language.

Question 5

Conjugation

Answer 5

Changes in the verb form based upon its context.

The proper conjugation of “to be” is “am” when it’s in the context “Help! I ___ on fire!”

Question 6

Consonant

Answer 6

A phoneme made by blocking the air coming out of your lungs in some manner. P, t and sh are all consonants.

Question 7

Consonant location

Answer 7

Also known as consonant place, this is one of three components of any consonant.

Location is the difference between “p” (lips) and “t” (tongue against alveolar ridge).

Question 8

Consonant type

Answer 8

Aka consonant manner, this is one of the three components of any consonant. Type is the difference between “t” (tongue blocks air completely and then pops open) and “s” (tongue blocks air slightly, allowing air to hiss out).

Question 9

Consonant voicing

Answer 9

This is one of the three components of any consonant. Voicing is the difference between “z”(vocal chords buzzing) and “s” (vocal cords not buzzing).

Question 10

Declension

Answer 10

Basically synonymous with “conjugation.” Linguists use conjugation to refer to the changing forms of verbs and declension to refer to the changing forms of everything else (e.g., one dog / two dogs, he/him/his, they/them/their, etc.)

Question 11

Declension/Conjugation

Answer 11

A list of verb conjugations or noun/adjective declensions (e.g., I am, you are, he is, we are, they are…).

Question 12

Feedback

Answer 12

The process of taking a test and finding out whether you got the right answer. If you get immediate feedback when you review your flash cards (by checking the back of every card to see if you answered correctly), you’ll improve the effectiveness of your study sessions.

Question 13

Gender

Answer 13

Languages use gender to put nouns into groups. Some languages use male and female, some use male/female/neuter, and some use people, body parts, animals, small cute things, thin objects, objects that usually come in pairs, and so on.

Makes more sense to replace “gender” with “random, arbitrary group on nouns.”

Question 14

Hebb’s Law

Answer 14

Neurons that fire together wire together. This is how we build memories. If you see a cookie, smell a cookie, and eat a cookie, you will associate those three experiences in the future.

Question 15

Immersion Programs

Answer 15

A place where all of your time is spent in the target language, even outside of class. These programs can be expensive, but they’re a phenomenal way to learn to speak fluently.

Question 16

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

Answer 16

An alphabet in which every letter corresponds to a single sound. If you know it, you can use it to tell you precisely what any foreign word sounds like and even how to form a new foreign sound in your mouth.

Question 17

Language Exchange

Answer 17

A language-learning arrangement between you and a speaker of your target language. You’ll meet up, typically via Skype video chat, snd talk for a predetermined time in your language and for the same amount of time in your partner’s language.

Question 18

Language Holidays

Answer 18

A trip abroad for the purposes of learning your target language and exposing yourself to the culture of your target language’s home.

Question 19

Leitner Box

Answer 19

Paper-based space repetition systems. They use a flash card file, a carefully designed schedule, and a few simple game rules to create the same sort of spaced repetition magic you’ll find in a computer program like Anki.

Question 20

Levels of processing

Answer 20

One of the mental filters that determine what you remember and what you forget. You’ll best remember things that you know how to spell (structure), you know how to pronounce (sound), you understand/see (concept), and you relate to personally (personal connection).

Question 21

Memory game

Answer 21

A game you can play with any new word to help memorize it. Can you find a personal connection with this word? If so, you’ll remember it 50 percent better.

Question 22

Minimal pairs

Answer 22

Pairs of words that differ by only a single sound.

Niece/Knees

Bit/Beat

Question 23

Minimal pair testing

Answer 23

A test using pairs of words that differ by only a single sound. If you test yourself with minimal pairs (Do you hear “rock” or “lock”?) and get immediate feedback (It was “lock”), you can permanently rewire your brain to hear new sounds.

Fluent-forever.com/chapter3

Question 24

Mnemonic imagery game

Answer 24

Attaching a mnemonic image (say, masculine = exploding) to a word (say, dogs, which are masculine in German) to form a mnemonic story (kaboom goes the dog). The more vivid and weird you can make your story, the better you’ll remember it later.

Question 25

Mnemonics

Answer 25

Memory aids that turn something that’s abstract (e.g., the masculine gender in German) into something that’s concrete (an explosion). They take advantage of our extraordinary visual memory, and you can use them to memorize many irregular, nonsensical patterns in your target language.

Question 26

More is less

Answer 26

The idea that the more things you learn about a topic, the easier it is to remember all of it. This is why you’ll have an easier time learning a language like Chinese if you make many more flash cards than you otherwise might for a language like Spanish.

Question 27

Output

Answer 27

Writing, for the most part. When you write, you test out grammar and find your weak spots. Output is the way you turn the hundreds or thousands of little facts you’ve learned into a usable language.

Question 28

Person-Action-Object

Answer 28

A memory technique used in competitive memorization. The basic premise is that you can pick a relatively small number of people, actions, and objects and connect them to form a great number of weird, memorable stories. We can use it to add flexibility to our mnemonic imagery (e.g., connecting a mnemonic person and/or object to a verb we’re learning, or a mnemonic person/action to a noun we’re learning).

Question 29

Phoneme

Answer 29

A single sound in a language (rather than a single letter); “sh” is just one phoneme in English.

Question 30

Phonetic transcription

Answer 30

Converting a word–like “enough”–into phonetic letters: “ɪnʌf” (usually into IPA).

Question 31

Phrase Book

Answer 31

A small cheap travel companion that tells you how to say various canned phrases (e.g., “Help! Someone stole my purse!” “May I buy an apricot?”).

Question 32

Recall Practice

Answer 32

Just another word for “testing.” You’re trying to remember something, and that effort is what makes a memory lodge itself into your long-term memory.

Question 33

Spaced repetition

Answer 33

An extraordinarily efficient learning method whereby you learn something and then wait a few days to review it. If you still remember, then you wait even longer before your next review it. If you still remember, then you wait even longer before your next review. By studying this way you push memories deeper and deeper into your long-term memory.

Question 34

SRSs

Answer 34

Spaced Repetition Systems - automated to-do lists for flash cards that monitor your progress and tell you which flash cards to study on which days to maximize efficiency.

Question 35

Tense-Aspect-Mode

Answer 35

Ways of playing around with verbs.

Time = Tense
Sense = Aspect
Certainty = Mode

Question 36

Tip of the tongue

Answer 36

A phenomenon in which you can recall parts of a memory but not all of it. If you experience a tip-of-the-tongue event and successfully recall something, you’ll double your chances of recalling it successfully int he future.

Question 37

Vowel

Answer 37

A phoneme made by allowing the air to come out of your lungs relatively i impeded. You can make different vowels by changing the position of your tongue and lips.

Question 38

Vowel backness

Answer 38

One of the three components of any vowel. Your tongue can move forward (“eg”) and back (“luh”).

Question 39

Vowel height

Answer 39

One of the three components of any vowel. Your tongue can move up (“ee”) and down (“ah”).

Question 40

Vowel rounding

Answer 40

One of the three components of any vowel. Your lips can round into a circle (“oo”) or flatten out (“ee”).

Question 41

Wug

Answer 41

A fake word used by linguists to test children on their ability to internalize a language’s sound rules. English-speaking kids learn to say “one wug, two wugz” automatically by the age of five, which is kind of neat, since they’ve clearly never heard of “wugz” before in their lives.